This isn’t anywhere near the worst example, but here’s yet another article about the terrifying, soul-crushing, Dante’s-inferno-grade hellfire inconvenience that a reporter was compelled to endure as part of the process of signing up for Obamacare:

Signing up for health care on the national exchanges … was an annoying and distasteful way to use my free time. I ended up spending several hours over the course of multiple days on HealthCare.gov, and I’m still not sure that I will be covered next year. I hope I’ll receive that letter—why not an email sent as I signed up?—soon.

Annoyance!? Distaste!? Several hours of effort… over literally multiple days!?!?? And he has to wait for a letter, not, gasp, a totally modern email!?!!!?!!

Get this man some laudanum and a fainting couch, stat!

Or, more appropriately: “Sack the fuck up.”

As usual, we see no caveat somewhere in the article about the relative unimportance of his inconvenience as compared to saving $1,500 on health insurance and, more importantly, contributing to process that now provides quality health insurance options to millions of Americans (like him) who had overpriced insurance but no options, or to people who had no options or coverage whatsoever.

We really don’t have any sense of perspective or proportionality in this country anymore…

This isn’t anywhere near the worst example, but here’s yet another article about the terrifying, soul-crushing, Dante’s-inferno-grade hellfire inconvenience that a reporter was compelled to endure as part of the process of signing up for Obamacare:

Signing up for health care on the national exchanges … was an annoying and distasteful way to use my free time. I ended up spending several hours over the course of multiple days on HealthCare.gov, and I’m still not sure that I will be covered next year. I hope I’ll receive that letter—why not an email sent as I signed up?—soon.

Annoyance!? Distaste!? Several hours of effort… over literally multiple days!?!?? And he has to wait for a letter, not, gasp, a totally modern email!?!!!?!!

Get this man some laudanum and a fainting couch, stat!

Or, more appropriately: “Sack the fuck up.”

As usual, we see no caveat somewhere in the article about the relative unimportance of his inconvenience as compared to saving $1,500 on health insurance and, more importantly, contributing to process that now provides quality health insurance options to millions of Americans (like him) who had overpriced insurance but no options, or to people who had no options or coverage whatsoever.

We really don’t have any sense of perspective or proportionality in this country anymore…

This isn’t anywhere near the worst example, but here’s yet another article about the terrifying, soul-crushing, Dante’s-inferno-grade hellfire inconvenience that a reporter was compelled to endure as part of the process of signing up for Obamacare:

Signing up for health care on the national exchanges … was an annoying and distasteful way to use my free time. I ended up spending several hours over the course of multiple days on HealthCare.gov, and I’m still not sure that I will be covered next year. I hope I’ll receive that letter—why not an email sent as I signed up?—soon.

Annoyance!? Distaste!? Several hours of effort… over literally multiple days!?!?? And he has to wait for a letter, not, gasp, a totally modern email!?!!!?!!

Get this man some laudanum and a fainting couch, stat!

Or, more appropriately: “Sack the fuck up.”

As usual, we see no caveat somewhere in the article about the relative unimportance of his inconvenience as compared to saving $1,500 on health insurance and, more importantly, contributing to process that now provides quality health insurance options to millions of Americans (like him) who had overpriced insurance but no options, or to people who had no options or coverage whatsoever.

We really don’t have any sense of perspective or proportionality in this country anymore…

This isn’t anywhere near the worst example, but here’s yet another article about the terrifying, soul-crushing, Dante’s-inferno-grade hellfire inconvenience that a reporter was compelled to endure as part of the process of signing up for Obamacare:

Signing up for health care on the national exchanges … was an annoying and distasteful way to use my free time. I ended up spending several hours over the course of multiple days on HealthCare.gov, and I’m still not sure that I will be covered next year. I hope I’ll receive that letter—why not an email sent as I signed up?—soon.

Annoyance!? Distaste!? Several hours of effort… over literally multiple days!?!?? And he has to wait for a letter, not, gasp, a totally modern email!?!!!?!!

Get this man some laudanum and a fainting couch, stat!

Or, more appropriately: “Sack the fuck up.”

As usual, we see no caveat somewhere in the article about the relative unimportance of his inconvenience as compared to saving $1,500 on health insurance and, more importantly, contributing to process that now provides quality health insurance options to millions of Americans (like him) who had overpriced insurance but no options, or to people who had no options or coverage whatsoever.

We really don’t have any sense of perspective or proportionality in this country anymore…

Here’s an interesting exchange that took place on a friend’s Facebook wall — among his friends and, at the end, the CEO of a non-profit health insurance company.

My friend’s initial post:

I don’t post my opinion on here very often unless I am really annoyed. I just spent three days on the phone trying to transfer prescriptions from Express Scripts to CVS… Both require the other to send the prescription transfer and neither one will lift a finger to transfer your prescription.

I wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this if it hadn’t been for Obama Care. I first felt that this was a great idea and that providing healthcare to the masses was good. Now I realize that Obama Care was written by people who have no idea what they are doing. They should leave laws that affect peoples health to doctors not to lifetime politicians who are only concerned about the next election.

Just getting tired of hearing about minor inconveniences that blind people to the enormous positive impact the Affordable Care Act is already having on the lives of millions.

One of his friends posted:

One thing to consider is that you now have real insurance that can’t be canceled by the provider. Under the old system, you had insurance until you really needed it – then you would never be able to buy insurance again in the private market. As someone who has had cancer, I am grateful that the old fiction of insurance has been replaced with a system where everyone can buy coverage.

Finally, later on, here’s the health insurance company CEO:

Most of the confusion, cancellations, and difficulties in the market right now are a carefully planned effort by insurance companies and health providers to make individuals blame Obamacare. Insurers deliberately timed their notices to coincide with the rollout of the exchanges. Those notices deliberately did not notify recipients that their policy changes were due to the removal of abusive clauses and exclusions that the law made illegal, and did not tell policy holders that they could probably find better and cheaper coverage from insurers on the exchanges. PS, I am the CEO of a health insurance company. I like the direction we are headed under the law.

Regarding that last bit, I’m really surprised that I haven’t been thinking about all of the overblown media fooferaw through that lens. It makes perfect sense. The Affordable Care Act outlaws some inhuman and abusive insurance company practices and then the insurance companies get together to strategically lard the blame onto ACA. And the media follows the pied piper wherever he goes. As always.

Things like this always make me think of analogies involving commercial polluters astroturfing local populations into opposing EPA crackdowns because they would “kill jobs”. … with nary a thought to the fact that the pollution is “killing people“, which is (call me crazy) kinda a bigger deal.

Even well-meaning journalists need to realize how important simple word choices in a political column can be:

Since the late 1960s, America has seen the growth of what the late Donald Warren in a 1976 book The Radical Centercalled “middle American radicalism.” … It ebbed during George W. Bush’s war on terror, but has re-emerged with a vengeance in the wake of the Great Recession, Obama’selection and expansion of government, and continuing economic stagnation.

See that bold bit? It’s in a paragraph that perhaps might otherwise suggest that “some loony Tea Party people believe…” that Obama has presided over an “expansion of government”.

But that’s not how it reads. It reads as if the author is making a factual statement, as suggested by the three other factual references that surround it.

So what’s the issue with the statement “…Obama’s … expansion of government…“, you ask? Well, as everyone should know from the hard work we do here on the debunking of zombie Republican lies, Obama has actually presided over the biggest contraction of government in modern history:

So, yeah. Word choice matters. And we all wonder why the Sheeple are so misinformed.